Vintage Peel - Reel tape format?

[ken]

I'm not an expert, Rocker, and have not possessed or used a reel to reel for 25 years, but my memory tells me our old Bush Elizabethan we had at home in the 60s and 70s had the tracks configured "1-4" and "2-3". There were two push buttons marked thus which you pushed to select which "track", giving double track mono - I am pretty sure stereo recording was not possible - on each "side" of the tape reel. Might not that kind of track layout explain what you're hearing?

ken


--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, rockerq@... wrote:
>
> Tonight I finally got around to listening to one of the reel-to-reel tapes 
> from The Decktician.
> 
> Quality is pretty good, despite the fact that it runs at 3.75ips. The tape 
> consists of tracks recorded from John Peel shows, around 1974 - On this 
> particular tape John's links have been edited out, although the occasional cut 
> off syllable is enough to confirm that they are indeed from Peel shows.
> 
> The deck I am playing back the tape on is a standard consumer "quarter 
> track" quarter inch tape deck - tracks one and three are stereo in one 
> direction, and tracks four and two are stereo on side two, running in the opposite 
> direction.
> 
> On this tape, when I select stereo playback (tracks one and three) I get 
> one track in the left speaker playing forwards, plus another track in the 
> right speaker playing backwards. When I reverse the tape I get the backwards 
> track playing forwards in the left speaker, plus the original forwards track 
> playing backwards in the right speaker.
> 
> I have two theories which would acount for this:
> 
> The tape is recorded in mono half track - with a mono recording taking up 
> half the tape in each direction.
> 
> or... The tape is recorded in stereo quarter track, but the left and right 
> channels of side one are recorded to tracks one and two, and the left and 
> right channels of side two are recorded in the opposite direction, to tracks 
> three and four.
> 
> Neither of these are formats I have come across before - anyone else know 
> if either format was ever used in commercially available machines?
> 
> Since the audio source in those days would probably have been mono medium 
> wave radio, I suspect that this conjecture is irrelevant, and that either way 
> we end up with a fairly decent mono recording.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Rocker
>